Accounting for charities and not-for-profits

AccountsIQ is helping WCVA with everything from trustee reports to SORP reporting.

“The more we use AccountsIQ, the more we realise how much it can do.” 

WCVA is the national membership body for voluntary organisations in Wales. It manages funding, training and a range of support services that help charities and non-profits ‘make a bigger difference together’. In the months before the UK’s first lockdown, WCVA’s Finance Director, Tracey Marsh, recognised that they needed better financial reporting and started looking at new finance systems.

Tracey Marsh, Finance Director, WCVA

“We weren’t happy with the reporting capabilities in our existing system, Exchequer,” says Tracey. “Every time we wanted a report that wasn’t standard, such as comparing actuals to budget with variances, we had to pay extra. That was on top of an already high annual fee.”

Lockdown accelerated the need for change

When lockdown happened, this sense of dissatisfaction turned into more urgent and serious issues. As with many other organisations, the transition to home working accelerated the need for digital transformation.

“Our old system was server-based rather than Cloud-based,” explains Tracey.

“It was clunky; dropping all the time. And it just got worse and worse.  In that first lockdown, most of the pain from a finance point of view was because of the system. It meant we were working twice as many hours to do the same amount of work as when we were in the office. We simply couldn’t continue like that.”

AccountsIQ came in at a good price

The WCVA team first heard about AccountsIQ from their Scottish counterparts, the SCVO (Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations). They were already using AccountsIQ and were happy to vouch for the system’s benefits. Nonetheless, WCVA still did their due diligence and conducted a thorough analysis of AccountsIQ against Sage, Iplicit and Exchequer.

“We chose AccountsIQ partly because of cost,” admits Tracey. “It came in at a reasonable price and we liked that there’s flexibility in the pricing. With so much uncertainty, we didn’t want to commit to a fixed cost that wasn’t linked to the number of users.”

Finance processes are now automated and seamless  

WCVA were also keen to move away from old, manual ways of working to more automated, seamless processes.

“This is something I love about AccountsIQ,” says Tracey. “Everything is self- contained within the system; even our bank reconciliations are now automated. You’re also able to attach documents to transactions; our auditors think this is wonderful.”

Budget holders have more autonomy

One of Tracey’s key objectives was for budget holders to have access to certain parts of the system, so they’d be more self-sufficient. WCVA has around 40 system users. Five are finance team members and the others are set up as light users which enables the wider business to manage approvals and access reports. 

The next step will be to start using AccountsIQ’s automated consolidation features. WCVA has two subsidiaries. One has already moved onto AccountsIQ from Xero and the other will follow in due course.

Multi-dimensional reporting is so much easier

Like many non-profits, WCVA uses AccountsIQ’s BI codes and multi-dimensional reporting to manage their complex accounting and reporting needs.

“One of our dimensions is used to distinguish between restricted and unrestricted funds,” explains Tracey. “Then we have lots of projects to which we allocate salaries and other costs; that’s another list of dimensions.

We’ve also created other dimensions so we can deliver detailed reports to our trustees that show exactly what each project is contributing to the organisation. Once we've closed the accounts, I can just run this multiple KPI report for the trustees. I used to have to do that manually and now AccountsIQ pretty much does it all for me, it’s brilliant.”

AccountsIQ also helps with SORP reporting

WCVA’s finance team created their Chart of Accounts in AccountsIQ to align with their SORP reporting.

“Now, we just run the GL explorer and there's the statutory accounts. Of course, we still have to do the notes ourselves, but the balance sheet is all there. It’s phenomenal!”

AccountsIQ is so easy to use, WCVA are using it more and more

When asked to sum up the single best thing about AccountsIQ, Tracey responds:

“As soon as we had the demo with Ellen at AccountsIQ, I could see it was a user-friendly system with a logical, intuitive layout. It was just lovely to look at.

Also, Ellen was so knowledgeable and helpful, I knew we’d work well together. In fact, we’ve found that the more we use AccountsIQ, the more we learn and realise just how much more it can do for us.”

Learn More

AccountsIQ solves the often complex accounting, productivity and reporting challenges of over 100 charities such as the Archdiocese of Dublin and Lepra. View our customer testimonials.

Find out more about our charity accounting software.

AccountsIQ and Enclude enable the Archdiocese of Dublin to go fully digital

The Archdiocese of Dublin is the largest Diocese in Ireland, with 197 parishes and funds under management that require reporting under new charity SORP regulations. The Archdiocese required an accounting solution that would meet their complex reporting needs whilst also providing a user-friendly system that parishes could easily adopt. This allowed a step-change away from paper, spreadsheet and bookkeeping systems. It was an ambitious project primarily due to the number of parishes and users and offering a good user experience was crucial in getting all the parishes digital and consistent in their processes.

The key requirements identified from the strategic review were:

• A highly secure cloud system with inclusive disaster recovery, upgrades and support in one service [SaaS]
• A finance system that is clear for Diocesan and Parish users to set up and easily adopt across the Diocese
• Consolidation of all 197 Parishes into a single reporting charity number was key which also facilitates a simplified internal and external auditing process
• Integration with a custom pastoral management system using API integration
• Extensive budgeting and reporting by department, fund, parish and project through a Business Intelligence layer [BI Layer]
• Systems integration capability to facilitate invoice capture, expense management, banking and approval workflow.

Following the strategic review and tendering process, the Archdiocese appointed AccountsIQ, partnered with Enclude, a non-profit technology consultancy firm, to implement a digital system to integrate pastoral management with accounting and provide consistent, consolidated reporting. 

Collaborative and personalised implementation

One of the challenges was the scale of the project. This meant the team getting to know all the people involved and creating a community-based approach to the project given the number of stakeholders involved. Ide Finnegan, Head of Finance and project director for the Archdiocese of Dublin explains:

Implementing AccountsIQ across all our parishes was a very significant project for the Archdiocese. There were challenges along the way, but we received great support from AccountsIQ throughout the process. It particularly helped that the implementation manager was also an accountant who understood what we were trying to do. This made the process much smoother.”

An integrated Salesforce solution

A seamless interface with the Archdiocese’s pastoral management system built in Salesforce was provided along with a custom cash collection form, built and deployed to allow parishes to easily lodge collections automatically into AccountsIQ with built in coding in accordance with SORP.  This allows a central view to manage funds for the assets of the various registered charities and the trustees to whom they report.  Essentially a simple capture method for the user, allowing complex reporting to be made more efficient.

Simplified consolidation across numerous entities

The Archdiocese required a consolidated financial reporting software across its 197 parishes and trusts. With numerous entities and a high volume of transactions, the consolidation requirements were complex. AccountsIQ’s simple to use, but sophisticated consolidation engine, enabled the Archdiocese to simplify the process by automating much of the consolidation and reducing manual inputs. It also simplified reporting for auditors through consolidated debtor and creditor reports. The Archdiocese is now looking to implement AccountsIQ’s automated accounts payable using OCR technology, the expense capture app and fixed asset register modules to further consolidate their processes.

Meeting the needs of multiple users

The Archdiocese of Dublin has 197 parishes and trusts each with its own Parish Finance Committee and unique user requirements. AccountsIQ understood the requirement for a flexible system that could meet the needs of a wide and varied range of users. AccountsIQ’s user-friendly features facilitated user adoption amongst parishes, particularly amongst users with less experience of Cloud accounting software. In this way, AccountsIQ offers a clear user experience at the front end, while enabling complex accounting solutions on the back end.

We realised early on that we had to offer an accounting solution to parishes that was more than a compliance exercise. With AccountsIQ we could offer them something more, an easy to use template for accounting that cut back on paperwork and saved time on manual processes. This efficiency has positively impacted uptake within parishes,” explains Ide.

A Cloud-led paperless approach to accounting

Cloud technology was a major factor for the Archdiocese in choosing AccountsIQ and Enclude. Previously they had used an on-site system (installed on PCs) which was impractical to roll out to each parish. The finance team recognised that the Cloud would dramatically simplify implementation and provide ongoing benefits for reporting and auditing.

AccountsIQ and Salesforce integrate seamlessly in the Cloud and use secure API technology to transfer data between both systems. This naturally provides an audit trail for donations and the ability to automate direct debit calls, auto-reconcile banks and prepare tax refunds for donations above €250 per annum from generous donors. The bespoke consolidated reports are all accessible through pinned electronic documents, thus cutting back on tedious paperwork.  This automated and paperless process also makes life much more efficient for the charity’s auditors.

The Future

AccountsIQ’s ongoing development and commitment to R&D means that the system is constantly evolving making it an accounting solution for the future. The Archdiocese anticipates that it will explore more opportunities to benefit from AccountIQ’s evolving suite of tools, particularly the expense module, accounts payable capture and approval, fixed asset register and open banking.

Ide explains:

One of the good aspects of AccountsIQ is that it’s constantly improving. The system we started with on day one has evolved significantly. AccountsIQ has delivered the best possible solution to the Diocese and Parishes and continues to release new features and functionality that make our systems efficient and compliant.”